Solution #1: Time Management

What it feels like:
I need more time!! I need a 48 hour day to get it all done!

You have so much to do and never enough time to do it.
When you finally manage some time to work on your creative career, there is so much to do: practice your craft, create new work/product, look for and book gigs, email, social media, follow-up on contacts and opportunities – you just don’t know where to start! So you don’t start. Or you do something else.
You are doing your best to get through that long list of To Do’s and the next thing you know the phone is ringing, you’ve got email, and the day has flown by and you’re frustrated at what didn’t get done!
You feel like all you do is put out the fires, jumping on the most urgent stuff – but you never seem to get to the things you really want to do – the creative project that has been buzzing around your brain for months, even years.

This is probably the key issue of our generation. We have all these tools and technologies, but instead of saving us time (as we were promised) they have taken over our lives. On top of that, you’re juggling a day job because your income from your creativity doesn’t support you financially. And so, in effect you have 2 full time jobs – your day job and your creative job and you’d like to also have a life and perhaps sleep occasionally.

Success Solution:

The only solution to Time Management challenges is structure.

I know, I know, you rebel against the very idea of structure, that it will be constricting or get in the way of your creativity and your freedom. But it’s exactly the opposite. Structure is like your skeleton. Without your bones, your muscles couldn’t move you. Without your bones, you wouldn’t have the freedom to run, jump and dance. You need the structure to operate.

So, how do you create a structure that works for you, as a creative individual? First you need to get over the fact that you don’t already know how to do this. We were never taught how to manage our time. There was no Time Management 101 class in school, though I would argue that there should have been. So, stop feeling bad about your time management issues. Forgive yourself, and commit to learning this vital skill.

If you look at each area of your life as a project and then break each project down into simple manageable steps, it becomes obvious what the next step is. Then you look at your schedule and break it up into blocks of time that are devoted to each area of your life. So you know that it’s Monday evening and that’s when you work on your craft. You look at your “Craft” project and know what you want to work on next. Life becomes extremely simple and obvious and incredibly freeing.

Once you’ve got a model schedule, you can play with it to create the flexibility to manage change, unpredictability and all the wonderful opportunities you are creating for yourself.

Time Management is a skill that you can learn!

And with some effort, you can implement these skills and turn around your experience of time. Maybe you’ve tried time management systems and they didn’t work for you. In my experience that’s because you tried to impose someone else’s structure on yourself. What you need to do is figure out what works for you, and then systematize that.

Working with a coach can help you to learn these skills as well as manage the obstacles, both internal and external, that stop you from managing your time well. This is a critically important step to avoid the burn-out roller coaster that comes from not living a balanced life (see also Challenge #8 – Balance).

The bottom line is that there are only so many hours in the day.

So, the solution isn’t about creating more time – unless you’re Hiro from the show Heroes, you’re not going to be able to do that. And it’s also not about doing more stuff. The Solution is about choosing the right things to do at the right time for you and creating systems and structures to make doing that consistently easy and effortless. As with all systems, one of the reasons they work is that decisions are made in advance. This will save you time, stress and uncertainty. And create room in your brain for more creativity.

Recommended Actions:

Purchase Time Management from the Inside Out , by Julia Morgenstern and schedule 1 hour each week to read the book and work through her processes. This is a book you DO, so don’t just read it!
List your 5-6 Categories (e.g. Work, Family, Self-Care, Finances, Spirit, Community, etc.) and break them out into subcategories if necessary. Block out your time by category
Organize your To Do List by the same categories, preferably on separate pages or spreadsheets – so that when you are working in one category you are not distracted by all the stuff you have to do for a different category
Play with the time structure to find what works for you – very often it takes between 5-10 trials to get a schedule that works for you, so don’t give up if you don’t get it exactly right the first time. Keep what worked, and rearrange the rest.
Get support. Find friends who are working on this too. Work with a coach.
Join the Artists Marketing & Business Academy and take the classes that teach these skills.
Experiment! Change one thing and do it that way for a week. See how it works!
If you have something that’s working with consistency – attach other things to it. (e.g. I always eat a good lunch, but I’m not taking my vitamins – start taking my vitamins with or immediately after lunch)